


In the Shallow (Lionhearted redux)

by ABookAndACoffee



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Post-ACOFAS, Promiscuity, Self-Harm, Weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 17:19:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18015095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABookAndACoffee/pseuds/ABookAndACoffee
Summary: Nesta and Cassian run into one another at a bar before Feyre and Rhysand's wedding, where their pasts come rushing in.An evening alone at the hotel bar was all she asked. Alone, not lonely, as she was constantly telling Elain. There was a difference, she insisted, and even if no one understood what she meant, Nesta was confident in her own needs. So few events in her life played out the way she wanted, but at the bottom of any list of people she wanted to see that evening would be Cassian.Circled, underlined, and in bold letters, Cassian.





	In the Shallow (Lionhearted redux)

**Author's Note:**

> This is 100% a rewrite of my fanfic Lionhearted, which I started in early 2017 and never finished. Here's to hoping I finish this version.

“Nesta.”

The distinctly masculine voice came from behind Nesta Archeron. She knew who she would find there, the timbre of that voice as familiar as anyone else’s, though she wished she wouldn’t turn to find that she was correct. Rather than turning around, she glanced up at the mirror that covered the wall behind the bar. 

An evening alone at the hotel bar was all she asked. Alone, not lonely, as she was constantly telling Elain. There was a difference, she insisted, and even if no one understood what she meant, Nesta was confident in her own needs. So few events in her life played out the way she wanted, but at the bottom of any list of people she wanted to see that evening would be Cassian. 

Circled, underlined, and in bold letters, Cassian. 

Nesta’s shoulders straightened without her willing them to, and she set her wineglass down on the marble counter with a clink. “Cassian.”

Cassian made a show of looking around the empty hotel bar. Clearly, they were alone. The lights hadn’t yet been dimmed for the evening atmosphere, and the live band was still in the process of setting up. Instead of addressing her, Cassian reached forward to strum his fingers on the bar top. 

“What’s good here,” he asked, tilting his head at Nesta. He had this habit that infuriated her, one in which he began a conversation pretending that they were in still in the middle of one, even if they hadn’t seen each other in months. 

“The alcohol.” Nesta shifted on her leather stool to face him. “Everything here is top shelf and you know it,” she said. “You’re just trying to find something to talk about.” 

“Maybe,” he admitted. “But I also come for the company.”

Nesta’s eyes narrowed. 

“Az is meeting me here soon, with Mor,” Cassian clarified.

Nesta huffed a semblance of a laugh. “Touché.” She sipped the dregs of her glass and then raised it almost imperceptibly. The bartender came over to refill her, uncorking the bottle and muttering a question under his breath. Nesta assumed he was asking how she was enjoying the drink, and she muttered something in return. He was attractive in a half-assed way, his level of effort correlating to how easy it was for him to attract women in his chosen profession. Truth be told, Nesta’s standards remained almost ridiculously high, considering she only remembered half of her encounters. And this one just barely made the cut.

The bartender eyed Cassian before leaving them to their conversation. He was evaluating his chances with her, she knew. They were still good. Better than good. But she’d deal with that later, once Cassian had left. There may not have been any comparison between the two, Cassian being rugged in a way that would have had her panting if there wasn’t already so much damn baggage, but then again at least with the bartender, Nesta could forget his name. She wouldn’t have to walk down the aisle in her sister’s wedding with the bartender watching her, judging her, waiting for her to do and feel better. 

Cassian watched the bartender walk away, his expression refusing to change. 

The weekend held many challenges for Nesta. Many questions plagued her, such as how she could drink without judgement. Feyre’s critical eye seemed to sniff out a glass in her hand better than she sniffed out handsome bachelors. Then there was also the question of who Nesta could sleep with without it becoming the talk of the family. And there was how she could avoid her father, and reassure Elain that she was doing fine.

Yes, Nesta was doing just fine. Fantastic even, she told herself as the wine warmed her throat. 

Navigating sticky situations had become second nature. Hell, she could do that while completely wasted. She snorted softly to herself. 

Bringing herself back to the present, Nesta look at Cassian. “But seriously, Cassian,” she said, “why did you chose this bar? Why not somewhere less… Rhysand? Don’t you get enough of each other already?”

The intricate pounded tin ceiling of the bar did lend it a sophisticated, worn touch, though Nesta knew that it had been newly renovated by her soon-to-be brother-in-law. There had been deadlines and calls to contractors and materials salvaged and shipped from who-knew-where, according to Feyre. All of it in preparation for the big event. 

That’s why they were all there, in that hotel. Rhys and Feyre were to be married soon, two days from then, in fact, and so Nesta was to be thrust into situations where she had to speak with people she would have preferred forgetting existed. It was quite a long list, if she bothered to write it all down.

“Seriously, Nesta, we’re all staying here. Didn’t you know? Since the ceremony is nearby and the reception is here, most of the guests are being put up in rooms here at the hotel.” Cassian signaled to the bartender and bit out a quick order of whiskey neat as Nesta contemplated the implications.

Fuck. No wonder Feyre had offered Nesta a free place to crash for the events. It wasn’t just that Nesta needed a place to stay, but she would now be surrounded by people. People who would notice if she slurred her words, would notice her stumbling into her room at 4am smelling of sex.

Nesta looked for her purse, wondering how much money she had and if she would be able to find a decent room on such late notice. Hell, it didn’t have to be decent, just somewhere else. Anywhere but here, where the prying eyes around her would be happier than she could ever imagine being. They wouldn’t be pleased in her downfall, no. Never that. They would only hold pity for poor Nesta. But they had everything that she had never known could be taken away from her. Everything she never knew she wanted until she had lost it. 

Cassian placed a hand on Nesta’s arm, so lightly that she almost didn’t feel it. But she still drew in a breath as if he had slapped her. 

“What,” she asked sharply, pulling her purse around to her side as if he were pickpocket. 

“Don’t go anywhere,” Cassian said, nearly pleading. “We won’t bother you, I promise. I mean unless you ask. Nicely.” As he spoke, a grin crept onto his face, one that Old Nesta might have been captivated by. 

Nesta’s shoulders relaxed, and she took a healthy swig from her glass of wine. “Like you could make me do anything I don’t want to.”

“No.” Cassian shook his head ruefully. “None of us have that illusion. But at least let me keep you company for a while.”

“And what if I still want to go?” Nesta tilted her head.

Cassian shrugged and took such a small sip from his glass that Nesta suspected the liquor had barely even coated his full lower lip. Those lips and the way he looked in that jacket - fuck, fuck, fuck. It was so much easier pretending she could content herself with the bartender if Cassian hadn’t shown up. Now she doubted she’d get wet enough for the stranger, let alone be able to come without Cassian’s face slipping into her daydream like a thief in the night.

“I won’t stop you from leaving. But the minibar in your room isn’t stocked like this place.” Cassian gestured to the glass bottles lined up in front of the mirror-lined bar, sparkling in the dim light with deep, intoxicating color. 

At least he was blunt about her current lifestyle choices. Sugar-coating was more Elain’s style, and Nesta had to play along. She had a role with each of her sisters; with Elain everything was fine and Nesta always had one foot in recovery. With Feyre, everything was going well enough that she could function daily. That was all Feyre cared about, after all. 

With Cassian… perhaps she was aware that she was letting him down, but he wouldn’t always let it show. Perhaps around him, she could stop pretending that she wasn’t a complete and total fuck-up, and have that not be the end of the world. 

The darkness always crept in at the periphery of her thoughts, where she shoved them down with another drink. 

“Okay,” Nesta said.

“Okay?” Cassian’s face brightened, and Nesta rolled her eyes. 

“Yes.” Nesta shifted on her barstool, readjusting her expectations of the evening. Perhaps being with someone else instead of alone wasn’t the worst possibility.

Cassian took a seat on the barstool he had been hovering over, hanging his coat on a hook underneath the bar. “So,” he began, “How is work going?”

Nesta burst out laughing. “Work?” She looked around the bar. “Um, don’t you think this place has heard enough of that sort of conversation?”

“By men in suits?” Cassian’s eyes tracked Nesta’s expression even as he lifted his glass to his lips. At the rate he was going, Nesta would have polished off a bottle of wine by the time he finished his first drink.

Nesta nodded. “Very expensive suits, with wives at home who have shining blonde hair. And they have 2.5 children and a dog.”

“A golden retriever?”

“No.” Nesta shook her head. “Not masculine enough. Maybe a German Shepard.”

Cassian finished the rest of his drink in one swallow and gestured with just enough effort to get a fresh pour. It was amazing, how little communication really needed to happen in places like that. It might have been the draw of bars. Or so Nesta told herself.

“So if we can’t talk about work, what should we discuss?” Cassian was turned to face Nesta fully, and she felt on display. He kept his knees a respectful distance away from her, but it didn’t lessen the impact of his gaze directed at her, as if nothing else in the world existed, let alone mattered.

“The weather,” Nesta proposed. 

Cassian scowled. 

“No?” Nesta puckered her lips in thought. They couldn’t talk about anything personal. Nothing that would expose her, or make her want to know more about him. Everything there was too raw, too tender, like Nesta had cut herself open just to see how much she might bleed. 

She glanced over at Cassian, and the way he watched her. He couldn’t read minds, but he had a talent for making her feel as if he had read hers. Her heart leaped in her chest and she shrugged it off as nerves for the weekend. And that, she reminded herself, was what the glass in front of her was for. She finished the drink and gestured for another. 

Nesta had become an expert in untamed self-restraint. It didn’t count if she were in the privacy of her own home, or if she never bothered learning the bartender’s name. She had resolved long ago to not give a shit, and she had held on to that promise until it chaffed at her, left bruises and gaping wounds where old relationships used to be.

Cassian was not one of those relationships. Not as long as neither one of them admitted to the night that she had knocked on his door and he had let her in.

“Books,” Nesta said after a long pause.

Cassian raised an eyebrow. “Books?”

“Yeah.” Nesta shifted on her stool, settling in. “What have you been reading?”

“Well,” Cassian began, “Do reports for work count?”

“No. Not unless you want me to call you a number of insults, including boring as fuck.”

Cassian nodded his head in contemplation. “You can call me whatever you want, Nesta.” He grinned and she caught the innuendo laced on his lips. 

“What is the last book you read?” Nesta side-stepped the landmines inherent in Cassian’s presence and swallowed another drink, closing her eyes. Three glasses. She was going to be okay. As long as she kept track of how many drinks she’d had, she would make it through the night intact.

“The Catcher in the Rye?” Cassian’s intonation had too much lift at the end to be a statement, and Nesta rolled her eyes. 

“Are you sure about that?” 

Cassian made a noncommittal nod. “Sure.”

“And what was this, for a class? High school?”

“College.”

“Hm.”

“Is that skepticism I hear?”

Nesta pursed her lips.

“Did you think I could work for Rhysand and not know my shit?”

Nesta lifted her glass in congratulations before taking a drink. “I suppose not.” She paused. “I hated that book.”

Cassian nearly spit out his drink, then grinned, the dimple that Nesta loved making its appearance. “Me too.”

“So we agree upon one thing.” 

A brief silence crept between them, though Cassian kept his attention firmly on Nesta. “What’s the last thing you read?”

Nesta took a breath.

“Can’t remember?”

“No,” she snapped. “You wouldn’t have heard of it though.” Nesta had chosen a topic she thought would keep them away from the personal, would keep him at arm’s length, the way she liked. Nesta was startled to realize that Cassian asking her about the books she had read was more than she had told anyone else about her life recently. 

Alone, but not lonely. That’s the motto Nesta had told herself she lived by, since they had stopped talking. There had been a few weeks where she had opened up to him more than she ever had to anyone else. During that time, Nesta had learned that being alone and loneliness may not have been related, but there still managed to be a Cassian-shaped hole in her life when she pushed him away.

Before she could come up with a better response, Cassian cut in.

“Is it porn,” Cassian asked. “It’s porn, isn’t it.”

Nesta swatted at him half-heartedly. “Vicious.”

“Oh come on,” Cassian said, “It was just a joke.”

“No,” Nesta replied, “that’s the book I read. Vicious.” 

Cassian sat back, contemplating. “What’s it about?”

“I’ll loan it to you.” The phrase slipped from Nesta before she could consider the implications. Loaning her book to Cassian meant seeing him again, perhaps multiple times, meant discussions about the characters and the plot, everything that she tried to avoid. 

“You don’t have to do that,” Cassian said. “Unless you want to.”

Nesta considered. It wasn’t an obligation. This wasn’t a conversation that they had to continue. Cassian could read the book, she would take it back from him, and she would not think about his hands on the pages that hers had passed over, would not wonder which lines had made him laugh, or made him try to figure out what would happen next. 

“I’ll bring it tomorrow. For the rehearsal dinner. We’ll see each other there, right?” Rhys and Feyre’s dinner was one of the few events Nesta was obligated to go to, as a bridesmaid. She’d avoided as many social responsibilities as she could, but perhaps she could check this one off the list when she handed over that bound stack of paper and ideas. 

“Sounds like a plan.” Cassian sipped the last of his drink, then waved the bartender off when he asked if Cassian wanted a refill. 

Looking between the two men, Nesta felt a crawling sensation begin in her toes and traveling up to her core. She wouldn’t be going home with the stranger with the drinks after all. One of the hazards of being around Cassian was that no one else compared. Her vibrator would have to be enough for the night. 

Nesta signaled for another drink, wondering if she should stop, if she could. If she didn’t stop at this drink, maybe she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from making other bad choices, ones she could deal with when she woke up in the morning.

Nesta crossed her legs, letting the flared skirt of her dress fall where it may. Cassian kept his eyes on hers, despite the spread of her thighs, the skin she revealed, the heart she laid bare. 

Nesta rolled her eyes and turned back to her drink. 

“So, tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll come find you and bring you that book. You can bring it back whenever you’re done.”

“Look, Nesta,” Cassian said, but she held up a hand to stop him.

Nesta closed her eyes against him. Myth said that ships had been launched for less than the way that he made her feel when he rounded out the consonants and vowels of her name, and Nesta didn’t need one more thing to make her lose her equilibrium. The bottle of wine she’d drunk, the others she would consume in the coming hours, they were enough to make her escape the thoughts that haunted her. 

As the wine emptied from the final glass that she would drink there, in front of Cassian, Nesta’s fingerprints became more evident. She attempted to wipe one away with her thumb, sighing as it merely smudged. 

She had barely gotten a good buzz going, and she couldn’t stay there. Not with Cassian, not when she wanted nothing more than to bury herself in him. 

A high, twinkling laugh came from the entrance to the bar. Nesta’s shoulders straightened and her chin lifted as she turned away from Cassian. He glanced at the door, as if either of them needed confirmation that Mor had walked in the door, likely with Azriel in tow. 

Cassian turned back towards Nesta, his mouth open but hesitating. He touched the back of her hand, reassuring and protective, and Nesta felt a knot in her stomach. He wrapped his hand around her fingers, anchoring her in place at her seat. 

Mor and Azriel made their way to the bar, casual, as if they hadn’t ruined everything. 

“Cassian,” Mor said, leaning on the marble, “What’s good here?” She had the same habit of beginning a conversation in the middle, and Nesta wondered if it came from how long they had all known one another. As someone whose only close relationships came from two sisters who didn’t really know or understand her, Nesta found it incredibly annoying.

Mor asked the bartender for a glass of whatever Cassian had had before turning to Nesta. “Nesta, how are you doing?” Mor tilted her head in a sign of interest, but Nesta couldn’t tell if it was genuine. 

“Fine. Tired.” Nesta stood from her stool and raised a hand to the bartender who was crestfallen to see her go. “Closing my tab,” she said shortly. When his eyes lit up at Mor’s presence, Nesta snorted. Perhaps he would be working the next evening, and their plans wouldn’t go completely awry. 

Cassian looked from Nesta to Mor, while Az’s eyes traveled from Nesta to Cassian. 

It was all Nesta could do to keep herself from rolling her eyes at all of them. Perhaps if she’d finished a second bottle she could have handled it. With grace or with truth, she wasn’t sure. That was the fun part about drinking. It made life easy, but unpredictable. 

Cassian stood from his own stool, reaching up to help Nesta into her jacket. She turned, allowing him to help her. What she didn’t expect were words. 

“Let me walk you upstairs,” he whispered in her ear. 

Nesta savored the warmth of his breath on her for a moment before turning around. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the dinner.”

Nesta left the hotel bar without looking back, knowing the whole time that Cassian watched her walk away, and that she would have given anything for him to call her back.


End file.
